Free Behind the Seams by Betty Hechtman Page B

said.
    “Right.”
    “You know where to reach me if you need anything. Sleep well.” And then he hung up.
    I put the phone back in the charger and Barry didn’t say anything at first. Like I was supposed to believe that he hadn’t noticed that I was off the phone. He had made a plate of food but left it on the counter as he came up behind me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
    “You okay?” His hand began to massage the back of my neck. “I don’t get it. Only you go to a talk show and end up with a corpse. You better let this one go. No investigating. Let the cops handle it,” he said.
    “You know something, don’t you?” I said.
    “And I’m not telling,” he said.

CHAPTER 7
    I WENT TO THE BOOKSTORE EARLY THE NEXT DAY to try to make up for the lost time. I picked up a coffee from the café and headed to the yarn department. Yesterday the group had hung out there almost until closing time, and I’d never gotten a chance to straighten up. We’d arranged the bins of yarn by color, and it was like being surrounded by a rainbow. Once I’d picked up the stray hooks and yarn bits off the table, I began to straighten out the bins so that all the skeins were where they belonged. I heard someone come into the area and turned to ask if they needed help.
    “Oh,” I said, surprised when I saw that it was Detective Heather. She had walked over to the bins that we’d labeled “Just Socks.” She began taking out skeins and feeling the yarn. I had never made any socks and didn’t know how much help I could be but offered anyway.
    “I don’t need any help,” she said with just the slightest edge. “I’ve been making socks for years. I’d like some really soft yarn, like a cashmere blend. You have no idea how sensual a pair of hand-knit socks can be. Men love them.”
    “Oh,” was all I could croak out as she continued on going through our stock of yarn.
    “I’m looking for something special for someone special,” she said, and then explained she was getting a head start on holiday gifts. On top of everything else, she had to be one of those organized people who probably had all her holiday gifts wrapped and ready to go before Thanksgiving. Not me. The night before Christmas, I would probably be trying to finish a scarf. Something in the way Detective Heather emphasized the phrase someone special gave me the feeling she was talking about Barry, but I couldn’t really ask.
    “I suppose you’d have to be careful who you give handmade socks to. It might seem a little personal,” I said.
    She looked at me dead-on. “That’s the point. Forget all this nonsense about the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Make his feet feel good and he’s yours.” She plucked two skeins out of the cashmere blend in a color called midnight rumble, which was really just black, and began looking at our display of needles.
    “Just a heads-up,” she said. “You might as well save your sleuthing skills. There’s no question—Nell Collins killed Robyn Freed. Several of Ms. Collins’ coworkers said Ms. Freed was always picking on her because she thought her aunt had gotten her the job. One of the other production assistants even said Ms. Collins had said she wished Ms. Freed would drop dead.” Heather let the comment hang in the air a moment before proceeding. The rest had to do with Nell getting the drink and sweetener for Robyn. All the tests weren’t in, but they were pretty sure the cyanide had been in the sweetener. “We checked the rest of the supply, and if you looked closely, you could see where the packets had been slit open at the seam and reglued,” Heather said. “We searched Ms. Collins’ cubby at the production office and found a glue gun.”
    I didn’t know what to say. I knew Robyn had hassled Nell, and I’d heard Nell say she wished Robyn was out of the picture. And yes, Nell had given Robyn the drink and the sweetener. But the last part? “So, the packets were reglued and Nell had